This Mortal Quill

NaNoWriMo, meet Iron John

I've decided to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. Not so much because I had anything I really wanted to work on, in fact I don't want to subject any of my babies to such torture. I just need to get back into the habit of writing--couple that with a vague regret for not participating for the last two years, and here I am, all signed up.

Now, my next step was to figure out what *exactly* am I going to write. I wasn't about to start from scratch (although if I do it again I might) so I sat down with my plot and characterization books and tried to pick something. I was casually flipping through another book and read an interview with Donna Jo Napoli about her book Zel and indeed her whole take on expanding fairy tales. It sparked something inside of me, and I quickly drew out my gilded, leatherbound copy of Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales, thinking vaguely of writing about "The Goose Girl" or perhaps "The Raven" but nothing seemed to lend itself well to a 50k expansion. A few jumped out at me, but there just didn't seem to be enough there. I ended up getting sucked into the stories, and became absorbed in a tale called "Iron John".

It's not really about Iron John, but about an unnamed prince who has contact with the title character. What grabbed me was the depth of the characters, the goodness of the prince in the face of adversity, and the unnamed princess, whose playfulness and wittiness is completely and utterly conveyed in one line of dialogue at the very end of the story. Also, Iron John is noble and sad, even though he's portrayed as an evil(ish) character. There just seemed to be a lot to work with, and indeed I'm seeing a thousand ways to expand it.

I expect to be very busy this November, but I can't wait. I know the story has been adapted before, but I've not read the adaptation, so I don't expect to be much colored by it. As far as I can tell, the previous adaptations have tried to be an adventure story, a plot about doing. I'd like to tell a more introspective story, about the goodness of the prince's heart and the guilt that exists there and what he tries to do to atone for it. In fact, I think it'll be interesting to see the differences after I'm done.

posted by Quill @ 10:05 PM